Reported by Brian Danga

(Excerpt shared below. To read full report, go to: https://www.theblock.co/post/384753/crypto-crime-150-billion-usd-2025-state-actors-scale-onchain-chainalysis)

The professionalization of the illicit onchain ecosystem reached a new quantitative peak in 2025 as sovereign states integrated with established criminal supply chains to bypass global financial restrictions.

According to a new Chainalysis report shared with The Block on Jan. 8, total value received by illicit cryptocurrency addresses climbed to $154 billion for the year. This figure represents a 162% increase over the previous year’s revised total, a shift the blockchain intelligence firm said was driven largely by a surge in activity linked to sanctioned entities, including state-level sanctions evasion.

Notably, Chainalysis emphasized that the $154 billion figure is a lower-bound estimate.

“A year from now, these totals will be higher as we continue to identify more illicit addresses and incorporate their historical activity into our estimates. For perspective, when we published last year’s Crypto Crime Report, we reported $40.9 billion for 2024. One year later, our updated estimate for 2024 is substantially higher at $57.2 billion, with much of that growth coming from various types of illicit actor organizations providing onchain infrastructure and laundering services for high-risk and illicit actors,” the Chainalysis team wrote.

Despite the record nominal value, the illicit share of all cryptocurrency transaction volume remains below 1%. Chainalysis noted its methodology generally excludes revenues from non-crypto-native crimes, such as traditional drug trafficking, where crypto is used only as a payment method, because such transactions are indistinguishable from legitimate activity using onchain data alone.

State actors and stablecoins define new threat landscape

Chainalysis attributed a significant share of 2025’s illicit volume to a narrow set of state-linked actors, led by North Korea, Russia, Iran-aligned networks, and Chinese money laundering groups.

North Korean-linked hackers stole $2 billion in 2025, per the report, which Chainalysis described as their most destructive year to date in both value and sophistication. The majority of that sum originated from the Bybit exploit in February — a nearly $1.5 billion incident identified as the largest digital heist in crypto history.